Public programs facilitate dialogue between academics and professionals, informing scholarship and strengthening practice.
Multiple day conferences, year-long colloquia, individual lectures, “conversations” between individuals, hands-on workshops, and Museums at Noon talks featuring our graduate students all contribute to the remarkable richness of MSP offerings.
Video recordings of some MSP lectures are archived for viewing in our Media Gallery.
- This event has passed.
Reconstructing History/Reimagining Originality: The Case of Henry Ford’s English Preservations
March 20, 2020 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
This event needed to be cancelled to to COVID-19 precautions.
Title: Reconstructing History/Reimagining Originality: The Case of Henry Ford’s English Preservations
Date: Friday, March 20
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room (125)
Presenter: Bradley L. Taylor (Associate Director, Museum Studies Program)
As the Stock Market Crash of 1929 was about to plunge the world into the Great Depression, Henry Ford was putting finishing touches on an outdoor museum of historic structures known today as Greenfield Village. Ford’s interest in preserving old buildings on site had existed for years but this assemblage of structures moved from other parts of the country was something few had seen before. Ford and his team thus led an effort to preserve in a way that offered little precedent upon which to draw.
This talk showcases Ford’s efforts to rescue three English structures—a retail store, a home, and a forge—and finds that the stories of these three preservations lead us to new ways of considering deeply held assumptions about the nature of “originality” and “authenticity.”
